There was a time when I wrote in my journal before bed and enjoyed collecting beautiful diaries. I would express my racing thoughts on paper and feel my anxiety fade away. I also sketched my vivid dreams to understand the worlds they showed me.
These days, I rarely write anything down. I only make to-do lists, which I type. My days are filled with tasks and reminders, most of which never turn into a story.
I recently came across an article on Substack titled “If our stories don’t change anything, do they matter?” by The Power of Storytelling. The piece shared a keynote speech by Jacqui Banaszynski, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who addressed a question from a younger reporter: Is it still worth it to be a storyteller today, even when the work doesn’t seem to make a difference?
Here was how Jacqui responded:
“There are no metrics that measure the impact on the human heart.”
“Bots couldn’t tell us if someone sat with a story about someone else and saw themselves in it, or forwarded it to a friend, or viewed the world through a wider lens after reading it, or even had their heart grow a little bit.”
“We can only tell those stories and send them out there with the trust, the faith, that they matter. They don’t just record bits of our histories. They record bits of our souls.”
She added:
“I think one of the greatest dangers we face as a diverse people trying to understand and build together — trying to have empathy and create a better world we all can live in — is control of the narrative.”
“It’s why you all must find ways to record the struggles and trials and lessons of your own lives, whether that’s in personal journals, through memos at work, letters to a friend or stories to your children.” Those words hit me like a truck. Storytelling, and journaling in particular, isn’t about productivity. It’s about being human.
Who Gets to Write Your Story?
Humans are storytellers by nature, and journaling is one of the few practices that allows us to nurture that instinct daily. It is an attempt to preserve bits of our soul, reclaim our own narrative, and leave a footprint of our heart.
The rat race forces us to measure everything by ROI and KPIs. It rewards the habit of evaluating everything through the lens of urgency, efficiency, and tangible gains. Within this framework, soul-enriching activities like journaling, reading, and self-reflection are often dismissed as time-consuming, unproductive, and almost old-fashioned.
Doing something just for fun can seem too easy for a mind focused on optimization. Journaling is seen as a hobby instead of a way to deal with the complexities of being human.
We often learn how to fill our schedules, advance our careers, and increase our wealth, but we rarely learn how to nourish our souls. We’re encouraged to record every moment of our days, but not to think about what they truly mean.
When we neglect the narrative of our soul, it’s easy to default to the narrative of the world. We become like a ship without an anchor, pulled whichever way the current flows. In an age where AI is increasingly shaping the human narrative, including what we think, write, say, and do, recording your own history is one of the easiest ways to resist letting the world write your story for you.
The need to tell, write, and understand your own story might even be universal. In her speech, Jacqui also quoted an email exchange with her former editor, Dean Rea. He remarked that the work of a communicator is deeply tied to faith, noting that “we all believe in something spiritually, even the agnostic. The question we all deal with is: origin, purpose and destiny.” Each time we journal, we are actively crafting our path to answer those three questions. We are charting our own origin, purpose, and destiny.
The Science of Putting Pen to Paper
There is real neuroscience behind this practice.
A 2025 study published in PubMed Central found that juvenile inmates who engaged in positive self-talk journaling showed higher psychological well-being. Neuroscience trainer Magda Tabac states that writing down thoughts, particularly using pen and paper, is proven to soothe the nervous system, connect ideas and memories, and spark new insights. Writing also activates brain areas responsible for speech, helping us express our thoughts more clearly.
Put It Into Practice: Journaling Prompts for the Soul
If you want to reclaim your narrative but don’t know where to start, use Dean Rea’s three pillars to guide your writing:
- Origin (Where you come from): Write about a specific memory from your childhood that shaped how you view the world today. What did it teach you? Who were you before the world told you who to be?
- Purpose (Where you are now): What made you feel most like yourself? If tomorrow is your last day on earth, how would you want people to remember about you? What brought you the most genuine joy today, entirely separate from your job or your to-do list?
- Destiny (Where you are going): Imagine yourself 10 years from now. What is the one thing you hope your future self didn’t compromise on? What kind of legacy do you want to leave in the hearts of the people you love?
Two Tips To Make It Stick
- Build a Daily Ritual, Not a Monument: Don’t wait for a life-changing event to write. Incorporate journaling into your existing routine — like writing for five minutes while your morning coffee brews or right before you turn off the lights at night. Make it a regular ritual rather than a rare event.
- Find a Journaling Buddy: Reclaiming your narrative can feel lonely in a world obsessed with productivity. Pair up with a friend. You don’t have to share the intimate details of your entries, but checking in weekly to ask, “Did you write this week?” creates the accountability needed to keep your anchor firmly dropped.
Words by: Nina Nguyen
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